One of the central debates that pervade research on inter-organisational collaborations pertains to explaining how alliance structures and process interact over time. In fact, in recent years different scholars have responded to calls to integrate these aspects in undertaking longitudinal research on alliance evolution. This thesis is an attempt to study and explain dynamic processes that underpin alliance evolution. The potential contribution of this thesis is threefold. First, it responds to calls for more theoretical and empirical studies on the evolution of alliances. Second, it attempts to provide a multi-level explanation of alliance evolution by 'paying attention to events that took place at inter-organisational (between the partner organisations); intra- organisational (within the partner organisations) and external/competitive and institutional environment levels. Third, it explores the dynamic interaction that takes place between alliance structure and social actors and which underpins alliance evolution in general. This three tier agenda is explored through a broad research question: 'Under what conditions do inter-organisational collaborations evolve over time?' The thesis, through critical realist lens, conceptualises alliances as dynamic and embedded social systems which are embedded in the environments of their parent organisations as well as the broader industry structure. Social structure of an alliance is thus represented by a nexus of internal and necessary and external and contingent structural relations and evolution of an alliance takes place when these structural relations undergo transformation or reproduction. The thesis adopts morphogenetic / stasis approach to explore and explain how pre-existing structural conditions, as a consequence of prior social action, influence social interaction in one morphogenetic cycle and which in turn creates conditions for social interaction in the subsequent cycles.

In the foreign-owned subsidiary development literature, institutional differences between home and host country have been mainly neglected. It has been argued that one of the reasons for that is a lack of appropriate institutional perspective, which could engulf prevailing theories and perspectives in the subsidiary development literature. This study seeks to narrow this gap by suggesting a theoretically consistent framework based on insights from new institutional economics and internalisation theory. It applies the concept of institutional distance in order to investigate the effects of transaction cost differentials between home and host country on subsidiary development. Thereby, it aims at contributing to existing literature to disentangle the institutional distance concept into formal and informal institutions. In particular, it explores the association between institutional distance and subsidiary organisational network relationships and strategic decision-making autonomy of subsidiaries in the Northwest of England. Furthermore, it is among the pioneering studies that propose systematic conceptual and empirical investigation of an interaction term between formal and informal institutional distance in the context of subsidiary development. Based on a unique census-like database of foreign-owned subsidiaries in the Northwest of England, a large-scale postal survey has been conducted. The database contains the most complete and up-to-date data of foreign-owned subsidiaries. It, thereby, minimises some limitations of previous studies, such as small sample bias or home country bias. Following the current best practise in the field, the institutional distance variables have been derived from secondary data. In particular, formal institutional distance measures have been used from the World Economic Forum and informal institutional distance from the World Value Survey. The choice of the variables has been guided explicitly by theory as demanded in the literature. The results indicate that informal institutional distance has a pronounced negative effect on the strength of intra- and inter-organisational relationships, and decision-making autonomy in foreign-owned subsidiaries. However, formal institutional distance seems to be less relevant where subsidiary development is concerned, only becoming significant in the interaction terms. This reveals the complex interplay between the two institutional dimensions. The results lend support to some of the theoretical expectations. It suggests a tendency that foreign-owned subsidiaries have stronger links to other units in the Multinational Enterprise network, and has more decision-making autonomy, if formal institutional distance is large and informal institutional distance is low. The policy implications seem to point towards only very limited means for a host location to influence subsidiary development through formal institutional adjustments. Overall, it might be more promising to focus on investment from home countries that are informal institutional close. Managers at subsidiary and headquarters level might be well advised to take informal institutional distance into consideration. It seems that such frictions could impede the exploitation of formal institutional transaction cost differentials between home and host country.

This thesis discusses the evolution of diversified business groups in developing countries, by examining the case of the Barbados Shipping and Trading Company Limited (BS&T) in Barbados. The research objective is to examine the BS&T's adaptation process to globalization with emphasis on the group-wide reforms (1998-2003), food business expansion and restructuring (1998-2003), and further food business development and its impact on the group performance, (2003 to the end-June 2008). Based of this examination, the thesis (i) analyzes capabilities demonstrated by BS&T in the adaptation process, (ii) explores applicability of the BS&T's experience to diversified business groups elsewhere and (iii) proposes to refine the evolutionary theory of the development of business groups, which emerged in 2001. One of the key examination findings is that the essential factors for BS&T's adaptation included the capabilities to exploit existing competence as well as the dynamic capabilities, or the ability to renew the competence through institutional nnovation and technological innovation. Internal and external coordination was crucial to this renewal process. A Another key finding is that BS&T (i) managed to balance the synergies from related diversification with the risk mitigation from unrelated diversification.

This research contributes to the literature on subsidiary evolution by exploring the developments of subsidiary technological capabilities. It has been widely acknowledged that subsidiaries have unique in-house capabilities that are embedded in two contexts: 1) the internal technology sources including the headquarter ("HQ") and affiliated-units, such as the research and development ("R&D") centres; 2) the external technology sources comprised of local, regional or global entities, such as local universities. This study examines the relationship between subsidiary capability and autonomy and the mediating effects of communication systems, by linking internal and external networks through which the subsidiary both exploits and creates particular technological capabilities, and through which the parent company HQ, exercises its control. Through a synthesis of the international business and innovation management literature review, a set of measures of technological capability, autonomy and communication have been drawn. A capability taxonomy configured for the semiconductor industry by Ernst et al. (1998) was adapted to specifically examine integrated circuit ("IC") design, production and marketing capabilities amongst five different Taiwan-based foreign wholly-owned subsidiaries in the electronics industry (particular in the integrated circuits sector). These are compared using quantitative and qualitative measures on factors such as the types and levels of technological capabilities, the degree of autonomy and the intensity of communication they have developed. The findings demonstrated that the heart of subsidiary technological-capability creating lies in exploiting the parent company's core- competitive assets and capabilities and creating its capability development using local knowledge systems, and regional and global cooperative partners. The extent to which such developments of subsidiary technological capabilities are dispersed throughout and leveraged on the multinational enterprise ("MNE")'s differentiated network, depends on the intensity of internal and external communication systems for assimilating information or knowledge. Moreover, single subsidiaries have different degrees of decision-making autonomy, which influence both the nature of the internal NINE network, and the extent of influence of the internal and external network linkages on the developments of subsidiary technological capabilities. Overall, this research concludes that subsidiary autonomy is a cyclical process between the parent company and subsidiary, which is affected by the development of a subsidiary's technological capability. The capability- creating of a subsidiary is driven by the interactions between internal and external leverages which broaden the level and types of technological capabilities (namely, marketing-, design-and production-related) in terms of the scope of responsibility, in-house capability and the capacity for assimilation and creation of 4new' technology.